Tag Archives: Disturbed

Well, I haven’t lived up to my promise in my last post to write more often, but it has been a very hectic Christmas & New Year season. Hope you all had a great time spent with family and friends, good music and good booze!

When I started writing this blog my vision for what I would be doing was quite strong and well-formed but as you do, I had small doubts as to whether it would all come together or not. 12 months ago following a phone call from Rick Sales, manager extraordinaire, my brain started racing with ideas and concepts as to what we could create and the potential to really be innovative and creative, whilst just doing something cool. It has taken that full 12 months and little bit more to get to the stage where an actual company and physical presence is being realised. Distorted Beverages is now trademarked, domain names locked in and a registered business name. The company structure has been decided and within the next month we will be an official Australian company. It’s amazing to see what I have dreamed of finally actually happening, amazing and scary at the same time.

There has been many discussions with Rick and Barry over at Global and with the help of some new and fantastic friends here I have been able to make my vision a reality. What this means in actuality is that in the coming Autumn we will be releasing Motorhead Shiraz onto the Australian drinking public closely followed by Motorhead Vodka. We are in negotiations with the largest independent group of liquor stores in the country and so far the response has been good. It is now up to yours truly to get out there and rally stores behind our concept, a hard rock section in every store. In reality that is what I want to achieve, having a selection of beer, wines and spirits with their own shelf area in each of the stores and what better way to start than with the mighty Motorhead!

My vision though doesn’t stop there. I have a lot of big ideas and dreams/visions/goals/whatever for where this company can go and I am very adamant that it will be a great success. That doesn’t mean there aren’t nights where I lay in bed not able to sleep thinking “Can I really do this?”. That happens more than I would like, but the only way I will fail is to give in to those doubts. I have already achieved things I wasn’t sure were possible, met some amazing people and we are only just getting started.

I really do promise to write again very soon. The other angle of this story is my brewing collaboration with Dan Donegan from Disturbed which is really starting to move in the right direction; very, very cool.

I have to apologise for being so slack and not having posted anything for the past couple of weeks, no excuses but there hasn’t been a lot to update either so i though i would wait until I had some actual news/updates.
So, last week I got an email from a lovely chap from a brew pub in Chicago. i had been putting out the proverbial feelers the past few weeks/months to find a brewing partner for myself and Mr Dan Donegan. I don’t remember if I mentioned this previously but Dan approached me about making a beer together and I of course said yes. What I’ve been trying to do since then is work out how to actually pull it off. I had been looking around for some info or contacts in the US brewing scene and in then end just sent out some cold emails and finally got a response. I was about to give up any hope of getting a lead but finally received one. I called Dan about it on Friday and we spoke for a bit and he was quite keen, so he will check out the brew pub and see what it is like and we’ll then decide if we should go further and create a collaboration brew with these guys. I’m deliberately being rather vague on specifics, such as the name of the brew pub, becaus ei’d rather wait until we have something more concrete before rushing out and making grandious announcements.

In wine news, I had another meeting with the winemakers and I’ve got some sample bottles of Cabernet and Shiraz at the price we are looking at. Labels and cartons are well along now and I just need to finalise some capsules and we are cooking.

I’ll announce more soon however and I promise to post more often in the coming weeks.

Like this:

Disturbed is a band I’ve been aware of for a long time, since they hit in the late 90’s really. I liked some of their songs and knew of their bigger hits but didn’t have any of their albums nor had I seen them live. I really didn’t know a great deal about them until in April I got an email from the touring company that was bringing them out to Australia requesting if they could come out to the winery and take a tour and try our wines. The guys from the touring company knew I was a big metal fan so they thought it would be cool for all concerned. Through several emails and phone calls with the band’s manager I met up with David Draiman and Dan Donegan, plus David’s fiancee and others for a lunch at a local restaurant and we then went on to the winery for tastings. David is real wine lover and also quite a foodie from what I could gather and the band obviously enjoyed seeing what the place they were touring in had to offer. The guys very kindly invited me to come to the show the next night and hang out, which I definitely said yes to.

I arrived at the arena a little earlier than the band, but was warmly welcomed by Jason their head of security who’d also come out to the winery the day before. I had full access to the arena and just hung out and watched the support bands. On a side note, the main support act was Trivium who I’ve been a big fan of since their Crusade album and I was really stoked to meet Corey and Mat and have a quick chat. Mat has a great food blog as well, it’s worth checking out.

Disturbed put on a great show, lots of pyro, lots of energy, the crowd was really into it and the band sounded great live. Here is a pretty good quality video from the show that also happens to be my favourite Disturbed song.

Afterwards I got to hang out with the guys in the dressing room area, drink some wine and hear some road stories. I’m not certain why but I had decided to bring along a couple of bottles of one of my home-brewed beers as well as some wine. Dan was particularly curious about it and even though it’s a good beer, one that I was pretty proud of, I was a little sheepish for him to try it. He polished off both bottles and loved it! The beer itself was a pretty simple English style summer ale, brewed with all Maris Otter malt and Kent Goldings hops and he kept giving it to everyone to try and told me several times how much he liked it. Imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks later I get a text message from Dan, saying he wants to get in touch and talk about doing something with the beer. He was so impressed by it that he is keen to work together on producing and releasing a beer sometime in the future. It still blows my mind to think about that, I’m this unknown guy from the Barossa Valley, not a professional brewer, but I guess I’m smart enough to say “Yeah, sure we can do that, it’ll be awesome!”. On reflection I guess my passion for it and my knowledge gained from the wine industry came across to Dan and to be quite honest he was the one guy of all the band that I felt an instant connection to. Sometimes you just meet people and you know that person will be a friend for life.

So, watch this space. I predict exciting and big things to come from this, hopefully in the not to distant future. If you have any suggestions or ideas for a beer that would best represent Disturbed or if you think you have the perfect name for the beer please let me know in the comment section.

Slayer and Megadeth were touring together in October of 2009, it was the must see show for any self-respecting metalhead. However, the day of the show I hear that Tom Araya has voice problems and that Slayer won’t be playing, this is confirmed at the venue, so we get a local metal band and an extended Megadeth set, which I still really enjoyed. The next day at work this guy comes into our tasting room, turns out it’s Slayer’s manager, Rick Sales. We get talking I show him around, talk about the show and the bands he manages, he has a good time and leaves. A few weeks later I get a package from him with some CD’s and t-shirts and I think what a great guy! Fast forward almost a year and Rick comes back to Adelaide with Bullet For My Valentine, we catch up again at their show, hang out, have some drinks and are fast becoming friends. Closer to Christmas of 2010 Rick calls me and he has this idea of making a Slayer wine, he wants to know if it can be done and would I help him out in putting it together. Of course I say yes, we talk for a while and I suggest that we can do a lot more than just a one-off vanity product for one of the greatest metal bands in history.

This, right here, is the start.

From there as time goes on over a few months and we talk more exchange emails and information we start to form this concept of what I call Distorted Beverages. But, there is another side of this story. Whilst all the preceding events are going on over an 18 month period, I’m fast becoming very into home brewing and craft beer. I’ve won a few awards at local, state and even a national second place for the beer I’ve made and I’m dreaming of a way to tie together my experience in the wine industry and new passion for good, craft beer and my love of all things heavy metal.

Where this all ties together is Soundwaves festival in March 2011. Rick arrange passes for my friends Christian and I and we take down some good wine and a also a few bottles of my home-brew, which I had made specially for BFMV and Slayer. The lads from Bullet really like the beer and are dead excited about the possibility of having their own brand of beer, I also meet Rob Zombie and all his band, a great guy, very approachable. His manager Andy Gould is a close friend of Rick’s and he introduces me to Rob and we talk about the Slayer wine concept and expresses interest as well, I suggest beer too, and he says “Yeah, definitely. That would work!” It is really at this point that I start to realise that my dream has a very real chance of actually coming together.

This brings us to the present day….. almost. There is the Disturbed angle which I’ll go over next time, oh and I met Metallica.

As the great Faith No More said, Introduce Yourself! This blog will cover my thoughts, experiences, trials and triumphs as I set out on my new venture into the world of business; allow me to introduce, Distorted Beverages. Distorted Beverages is my new company that will create loud wine and beer products with attitude for the hard rock/metal fan. This is an idea that I have had kicking around for sometime and now I have the right people and the motivation and excitement to create this company. My aim is to have our products available around the globe to horn raising metalheads everywhere, create a new and fun brand and most importantly a community of individuals whose common purpose is the love and passion for loud, heavy music and good beer and wine.

Through the course of this blog I will share my experiences, write about beers I’m drinking, wine that excites me, what I’m listening too and most importantly I will share each step of the creation and growth of Distorted Beverages. Strap yourself in for the ride, let me know your thoughts and opinions and let’s start this journey together!